
Memphis is the pin on the map where Delta blues, rock ‘n’ roll and African-American church singing meet. Anywhere else, this meeting would signify geographic coincidence, a coexistence of distinct musical traditions. But this is Memphis, where forces are drawn together to create something new . . . a crucible where the emotion and grooves of blues, rock and gospel can conjure a revolutionary sound: soul.
What’s surprising, then, isn’t that soul music sparked in Memphis, but how. Picture it: America, mid-20th century. Segregation is roaring, loud as ever in the South. A white fiddler named Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton, buy a moviehouse in an African-American neighborhood. Flip the theater into a record shop/recording studio. Invite neighbors and school kids to audition. Call themselves Stax Records. Piece together Booker T. & the MGs, shaking the world with Memphis Soul — and an integrated band.
In another theater-turned-studio nearby, a jazz trumpeter recorded a singer he’d met on the road, making a name for Al Green and Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios. The house label, Hi Records, proved an incubator for what Mitchell called “sophisticated funk.”